The Haunting of Drearcliff Grange School

by Kim Newman

  ‘And, what? Little would come out little?’

  ‘Ordinary size for her age. Yes, I think so.’

  ‘It might be a kindness,’ said Frecks.

  ‘Says the paladin who wants to pawn her magic hat,’ said Light Fingers.

  ‘I wasn’t getting at you,’ said Frecks. ‘I mean no harm.’

  ‘Of course you mean no harm. You never mean harm, Seraph, but sometimes – just sometimes, not often and with no ill intent – you do harm. Just pinpricks. But done all the same. I’ll bet that’s why your ears chafe. Your blessing knows, and pays you back.’

  ‘Is this what Miss Kratides wants?’ asked Amy. ‘Us tearing each other to shreds?’

  ‘Quite likely,’ said Light Fingers. ‘But cards are on the table, and we have to finish the hand. Amy, yes, I am annoyed you kept this to yourself…’

  Amy felt a clutch of shame.

  ‘But I can’t blame you. Your second secret isn’t mine. Think about it. “She will blame you for not telling what you know about Laurence.” You have told me. You’ve told all of us. Now, in the present. I might have blamed you if you’d kept it under your hat and I found out about it another way… but now I won’t. I will not blame you in the future. The secret means someone else will. That girl has a card with “You will blame her for not telling you what she knows about Laurence” written on it and is wondering what the jenkins it means.’

  ‘If I tell the whole Remove next week – get up and make an announcement – can I get out of it?’

  ‘Is that fair on young Larry?’ said Frecks.

  ‘Who cares,’ said Kali. ‘There’s more than one limpet’s tender feelings at stake. I like how Amy’s thinking. Go all out on the offensive.’

  ‘It’s a secret, not a prophecy,’ said Light Fingers, shaking her head.

  ‘It feels like foretelling,’ said Amy. ‘Not a mystic one, but a clever one. Remember Miss Kratides knew where we’d all sit in Windward Cottage. She worked that out. Probably on a board, with chess pieces. That’s the kind of thinker she is. Headmistress hired her despite her Black Notches. I reckon she’s a top brain. A mastermind, even. She’s got a high forehead behind that crimson band. She observes and makes calculated guesses. She’s not always right – she got Frost and Thorn mixed up, remember – but she’s thought all this through. We’re chewing over our secrets. Maybe that’s her way of stopping us trying to get at hers.’

  ‘If you made your announcement, how do you think Larry would feel about you?’ said Frecks.

  ‘No worse than she does now, in case you haven’t noticed.’

  It was Frecks’ turn to flash a real face for a moment.

  She double-knocked the table. Crushes were not spoken of. No teasing on the subject was permitted within the Moth Club. The double-knock – a recognised signal for expanding the agenda – accepted Laurence as a topic for discussion.

  ‘Since it’s been raised… yes, I have noticed Larry is no longer our Moth Mascot, and that’s my fault. I know exactly what I said and when I said it. My blessing gave me grief for it, like a hot coal down the back of the neck. We were none of us at our best at the Finish, but – still – I was thoughtless, and – thank you so much for pointing it out, Emma – I can hurt people without meaning to.’

  Kali waved the sincere confession away. ‘Ahh, balloon juice. Pinny Pocket got off easy. She blew the Game for us all, handing over three tobies to some rubberface any smart mug would peg as a rat a mile off. She shoulda got a slapping for it.’

  ‘That’s not fair,’ said Amy. ‘What she did was because of me. A.H. Wax fooled me first. I told Larry to trust him. I’ve tried to make amends, but she doesn’t want to know. Can’t say I blame her.’

  ‘My second secret,’ said Frecks. ‘She has cause to hurt you all. Is that Larry?’

  ‘Or Shrimp,’ said Light Fingers. ‘Or Palgraive, or Palgraive’s worm, or whatever combination of the two sits on the front row posing as a living person?’

  ‘Could she be your Broken Doll?’ suggested Frecks.

  Amy didn’t think so. Palgraive was flesh not china. Surely one girl couldn’t be the answer to two secrets? Unless the game was more fiendish even than it appeared.

  ‘Her father plans to murder her?’ mused Kali. ‘If that was on any of your cards, I’d reckon the daughter set up for the knock-off was me.’

  ‘I thought it was you planning to murder him,’ said Light Fingers.

  ‘True, but not contradictory.’

  ‘The phrasing isn’t consistent with it being you,’ said Light Fingers. ‘Besides, that’d mean you have two secrets.’

  ‘Youse dames only has one apiece?’

  They looked at each other.

  ‘She could use her Talent to heal the sick – but won’t,’ said Light Fingers. ‘Could that be Laurence? Maybe a dip in her pocket’s a cure-all. Aches, agues, palsies and pustules banished to the Purple.’

  ‘Possible,’ said Amy, doubting. ‘Sparks was relieved to lose her glove, I think. She didn’t love her Talent. But I’d hate to be “healed” like that and so would you.’

  Light Fingers nodded.

  ‘Besides, Larry did use her Talent to do whatever she did.’

  ‘She hasn’t done it again,’ said Frecks. ‘But I can’t see her sitting in the Infirmary at the bedside of some girl with mumps or measles, chortling about not lifting a finger to help. She’s not like that.’

  ‘She used not to be like that,’ Amy nearly said – but bit down on it.

  She couldn’t forget the voodoo stare.

  Now their secrets were out, Amy did breathe easier – the thing with Light Fingers hadn’t been as bad as she’d expected – and the others almost shrugged off their secrets. As if they didn’t matter. They were glad to share things that gnawed inside them. They could talk about these things with their best friends.

  Talking about the Broken Doll wouldn’t help.

  ‘One thing else,’ said Light Fingers.

  ‘Uh oh…’ said Kali.

  ‘Our secrets… Our first secrets… There are four girls out there trying to match their second secrets to us. So far as I know, De’Ath and I are the only ones with fathers in prison, so that’s an easy-ish win for someone.’

  Blake De’Ath, father of the De’Ath girls, was a jobbing henchman. He’d been in the Ghoul Mob, the Slaughter Boys and the Knightsbridge Knobblers. Nabbed by Scotland Yard after a sorry career, he was now in Princetown Jail. Bizou’s sister Angela, who passed out of Drearcliff Grange last year, was more ambitious. She would have her own gang. ‘Mine applies only to those with supposedly dead mothers,’ said Kali.

  ‘A club few want to join, which I happen to be in too,’ said Frecks.

  ‘Knowles’ father’s a widower,’ said Light Fingers. ‘There was suspicion about how she died. Carleton Knowles invents murders for his books, after all. Gould’s mother was sick for a long time and died last summer. I don’t know about anyone else. It’s never come up. Crumpets, do you suppose Polly Palgraive has parents? How must they feel about the worm plastering that simper on their dead girl’s face?’

  ‘Mine’s so general it could be anyone,’ said Frecks. ‘I doubt Dyall loves her blessing… or Speke. Those hands of hers make my skin crawl.’

  ‘I think Speke’s genuinely cheerful,’ said Amy. ‘She doesn’t mind her fingers being strange. Have you heard her play the piano? Her hands scuttle across the keys.’

  Frecks let her fingers dangle and twitch.

  ‘I reckon the girl’s just putting a good face on bad hands.’

  ‘Speke’s face is real,’ added Light Fingers.

  ‘We’re getting a teensy weensy bit weary of this new Application,’ said Frecks.

  ‘I can’t not see…’

  ‘Couldn’t you try?’ suggested Frecks.

  Light Fingers shook her head. ‘I can slow down running, but I can’t slow down thinking.’

  ‘My Ma might know a lama who could help with that,’ said Kali.

&nbs
p; ‘I’ll consider it… There, did that, thought it through… No ta muchly. Benefits outweigh drawbacks.’

  ‘For you,’ said Frecks.

  ‘My secret is so specific it’ll take serious digging to uncover,’ said Amy.

  ‘True, but don’t underestimate the other girls,’ said Light Fingers. ‘We’re not the only clever clogs in the Remove. Knowles has never met a mystery she couldn’t solve. If she reads up and asks around, she’ll put it together. And Marsh can read minds if she soaks her head in saltwater. Under the sea, speaking out loud doesn’t work so her people have more refined telepathic Ability than poor old Miss Gossage’s One-Way Telegraph.’

  ‘I bet Marsh hates her blessing sometimes,’ said Kali. ‘What with everyone who claps peepers on her thinking she’s got a fizz like a fish.’

  That struck them all as humorous, and the chortles got too loud.

  The dread knock of Kaveney returned.

  ‘Walmergrave’s cell, second warning, Minor Infractions for all four. Snuff the candle, stopper the gobs and get some bloomin’ kip!’

  VI: A Further Moment’s Dream

  WITH GROWING PANIC, A. realised she was alone in the Purple House.

  No, not alone.

  But alone with it… Her… The Broken Doll.

  She ran up from the cellar.

  She went from room to room, straying far from her scuffed chalk lines, dashing to regions of the house far from the kitchen and the servants’ quarters… Strictly, these were regions where she was not permitted to be, but no over-butler remained to chide her for her missteps… no masters or dependents were surprised that a mouse of a maid should trespass in their velvet-hung chambers… should set unworthy eyes on their painted ceilings.

  These parts of the house smelled of dried roses… All the clocks had wound down, and some had cracks across their faces that made her look away lest the numerals X and II clicked aside and eyes peeped through slits…The wonderful automata that provided eases and comforts for the masters – a lazy susan that was also a music box, a marionette with a stiff brush that swept ashes from fireplaces – were long since stilled.

  If A. stood on tiptoes in the Windward Room, she could see a dramatic seascape through big round windows… The gentle rustling she had mistaken all the while for the sound of her own thoughts was really the noise of waves shushing against rocks on the beach below the Purple House.

  So what did her thoughts sound like?

  And where was everyone?

  Between heartbeats, as she was transfixed by terror, years had passed in the house above… Everyone went away or died… or went away and died… even the ghosts, and the servants… Princess Violet, rages burned out in old age, was the last of household… Free to smash anything she liked, yet too feeble even to break fine glassware with her shrivelled little fists… she finally faded, leaving a strew of hair, teeth, nails and bones in her bed and drippings of candlewax on her counterpane.

  The Wrongest of the Wrong Doors had been open… A. could have hurried past, but lingered – for only a moment, she intended – and was caught by the basilisk stare…

  …For an age, A. looked into living eyes set in cracked white china…

  Then the Broken Doll lurched up from her rocking chair, and limped towards A., kinked over and unsteady… her toby jug head too big for her ballerina body… her black hair hanging to her knees.

  In four or five irregular steps, the Broken Doll reached the open door… A stiff little hand shot out, and the jagged stubs of porcelain fingers scratched A.’s cheek.

  The touch broke the long moment, setting A. free.

  Now she realised everything in the Purple House was too big for her… The seats of chairs were level with her chin, tabletops beyond her reach, doors two or three times her height… Rooms took minutes to cross.

  Perhaps she was a different size in this part of the house than when she kept to her chalk line.

  She could not find a door to the outside… Even doors beside picture windows through which she could see grounds opened into other rooms… Maybe the only way out was onto the roof, and down the walls… She went upstairs in search of skylights and found only more stairs.

  Along with the wave rustle, she heard tiny, irregular footsteps… The Broken Doll had followed her up from the cellar, or was merely wandering according to her own whim… A prisoner once, but now – if anyone had the title – she was Mistress of the Purple House… By the terms of the indenture agreement, A. was hers to boss about or pinch or reward or treat howsoever she saw fit.

  A. went up so many flights of stairs she worried the house had grown into a tower.

  She passed through a room where a dozen old paintings, deformed by mould and mildew, were piled against the wall… All the pictures showed the Devil, identifiable by horns and curly tail, and his Darling, identifiable by décolletage and sour expression, in fancy dress… Pirate Captain and Cabin Wench, masked cowboy and bloody-wigged squaw, Crimson Knight and Harlot Squire, a skull-faced man-sized bat with red-lined black wings and a pale blonde lady in a wet white shroud… Their big painted heads were wrong for their bodies, though the more pictures A. looked at the more she wondered whether she was the one made out of proportion… She felt her head, worrying that it was too small for her shoulders.

  Folding back slatted wooden shutters she saw glass doors and a balcony… Moonlight spilled into the room, and A. stepped into it, hoping to feel a ghost of warmth… The doors were rusted shut by salt-spray, so she couldn’t get out that way… She lingered, to take in the view.

  Out at sea, a great lantern was moving fast under the water… a sea serpent cyclops with an eye of fire… The creature made waves like the wake of a fast-moving ship… A funnel stuck out of its head broke the surface first, and belched smoke… An iron face pushed out of the sea – scowling, moustached, slat-fanged – the red-black prow of a locomotive.

  Above the water, the cyclops engine roared, louder than thunder… Pistons pumped and screamed as razor-rim wheels ground on rails… The train rolled along on what A. now saw were tracks mounted on thin poles, pulling coffin-shaped carriages… The poles swayed under the weight but the structure did not collapse… The train rushed onward, water pouring from gargoyle-like fixtures that wet the wheels… The great beast whistled as it passed the Purple House, a pirate lover hailing a mistress on the shore… Then the railway curved back under the water… Making a huge splash, the train crashed into the waves, its shrill toot turning to submarine burble.

  Clouds drifted across the pitted face of the moon… With darkness outside, the window became a mirror… A. saw herself.

  Instinctively, she had raised an arm to wave at the train… Her short fingers touched her long hair… Her mob-cap was absurdly small… Her face was much too big, and there was a crack across it…

  She was not, in fact, A.

  She was the Broken Doll!

  Amy was startled out of a bad dream.

  She was cold, wet and floating.

  She was not in her cell.

  Above was the night sky. Beneath was rippling blackness.

  Somewhere below, and a way off, waves crashed against shingles.

  She was over the sea!

  Her Kentish Glory costume was insulated against the cold, her flannel nightie wasn’t. She couldn’t feel her fingers or toes. She rolled in mid-air, trying to get sensation back in her extremities.

  She thought she was drifting out over the estuary, but had no way of telling.

  This hadn’t happened before, not in the worst days of her nocturnal floats. At home, she’d never blown out of a window… and woke in the wind.

  Only fliers knew how bitingly cold it was up here. Pilots didn’t wear fleece jackets, padded boots, goggles, scarves and leather helmets because the ensemble cut a dashing figure. They pulled on all the kit, then wound blankets around their legs – twenty-two-year-olds mummified like ancient relatives in bath chairs – because even ten or twenty feet off the ground, air temperature
dropped sharply, and the wind made it worse. Soaring to higher altitudes was an invitation to frostbite. Frecks’ Uncle Lance lost two fingers – frozen, then snapped off – while night-raiding. Airshipmen watched what they ate because they risked the contents of their bellies turning to ice and rupturing their bowels. After landing, they had to thaw carefully before going to the lavatory.

  Amy was too cold to worry about what might happen after landing.

  Her wet hair sloshed across her face. She scraped it away and rubbed her eyes.

  She tumbled – not flying, but floundering in the air – trying to tell up from down. She got control of herself and let her hair hang like a plum bob, so she could tell where the ground – no, the sea! – was. She turned over, as if floating in a pool with only her face poked out of the water.

  The sky was huge. She scanned it for the moon.

  Waxing gibbous. A good size. Enough light to get her bearings.

  And a million diamond glints of starlight to steer by.

  She took hold of herself, ignoring the shivers wracking her whole body, and became vertical. Her nightie hung on her. How had she got sodden? Dipping in the sea or passing through rain?

  Above the dark swell of a cliff she saw the weathervane of Windward Cottage.

  With that reference point, she could find the dorm.

  She set a course and flew home, struggling against thick air and myriad pinpricks like ice darts.

  She arrived bedraggled and aching, and had to halt herself before she slammed into the wall.

  The cell window was unlatched and ajar. Had she done that, with her fingers or her mentacles? She pulled it open and fit herself through, trying not to get wrapped in the curtains. She did not want to make a racket. She fastened the window behind her.

  Her cellmates were asleep. Light Fingers’ feet poked out at the end of her cot. In other circs, that would be an invitation to a tickling.

  Amy’s bedclothes were on the floor in a heap. She picked up a blanket and towelled herself with it. Then she peeled off her nightie and towelled again. It took an age to get the wet out of her hair. Rather than fetch a fresh nightie from her trunk, she took her dressing gown off the hook and put that on. She arranged her sheets and blankets on the cot and crawled under the covers. She concentrated on getting back control of herself. Within minutes, she’d stopped shivering and could feel her fingers and toes again.